Change an equation during the proofing stage of an accepted paper

Question

I am quite new in the world of the scientific publications, and I am worried about the following issue: I recently got an accepted paper in an IEEE journal. Now, the editors sent me the proof for the final pubblication and, by carrefully reading the paper, I noticed a minor typo in an equation: indeed, I put \min instead of \max in writing an optimization problem. However, the remaining derivations are correct.

The error does not affect the conclusion of the manuscript, and it has not been noticed by the reviewers. Can the error be fixed in the proofing stage or is it necessary another peer-review round?

Answer 1

This kind of typo is usually absolutely fixable in the proof stage. Just point it out like any other typo.

Good on you to read your proofs carefully enough to find it!

Answer 2

Absolutely yes. Even if it was a larger mistake, by all means publications should be as correct as possible. Your "goal" is to make literature that is good and useful.

Of course, the paper should still be the one you submitted, your changes shouldn't affect the result you proposed, and any relevant change should be commented so the editors can double check them and get back to you if they have doubts.

Answer 3

As mentioned by others, just point it out in the proofs as any other typo. In this particular case, since it's in an equation I would add an explanatory comment in the proofs (or if that is not possible an e-mail to the production department AND the editor - not that it's very well possible that the editor is out of the loop at this moment, so take care to include both - explaining that your calculations used the right equation and that it really just is a typing error (if that's the case, of course).